Bio Co-Founder and Chairman of Catch.com, developer of mobile applications for turning your ideas into action. Founder & former CEO of Health Hero Network (now Bosch Healthcare).
This presentation accompanied a talk I gave recently to a group of health care executives at an ABL Roundtable event in San Francisco. I was asked to discuss the meaning, importance and potential application of social media in health care.
Social media is often defined as “people having a conversation online.” In contrast to mass media produced by a few, social media is generated by grass roots efforts of millions of people. It has become the largest and most interesting use of the web.
Despite the fact that health care is one of the most information intensive fields, the health care industry notoriously lags behind every other industry in its adaptation of information technology. To get our initial bearings, we decided to kick off the discussion by asking the audience to describe their own personal use of social media.
Here are the slides from Steve Brown’s keynote presentation at the Bio-VC BIT Life Sciences’ Bio-Venture Capital Forum 2008, Dalian China, October 11, 2008. The Presentation discussed how to create a winning Life Sciences Innovation Strategy in an Era of Scarcity.
Abstract:
In the last century, technological innovation was propelled by a race to conquer nature and spread a modern lifestyle premised on an unspoken belief in unlimited resources. Now we find with ourselves with depleting resources and unsustainable systems for healthcare, energy, agriculture, water, and the environment. As Plato wrote over 2000 years ago, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” The great unmet needs of the current century relate to sustainability: How can we create sustainable systems for quality healthcare, agriculture, energy, and other sectors? These challenges are uniquely appropriate for innovation in life sciences, with new solutions enabled by the convergence of biotechnology and information technology. With the new challenges of our time, a new generation of entrepreneurs, scientists, and inventors will be inspired to apply their energy and ideas by starting new ventures. This talk will describe an entrepreneurial approach to life sciences innovation and will discuss how to create and foster an innovation culture targeting the great needs and challenges of our time.
